Golf clubs often become damaged while being transported in a golf club bag, even if club head covers are placed on the club heads. These club head covers, while effective at preventing scratches on the club heads, are ineffective against high impacts to the golf clubs which often occur during transportation. For instance, if the bag and clubs are transported in a vehicle, the bag often violently shifts position. In addition, if the bag is dropped from a plane's cargo hold or conveyor, the weight of the bag can cause the clubs to break or bend upon impact with the ground.
A convenient and easy-to-use cover for a golf club bag which absorbs such high impacts thereby protecting the golf clubs carried in the bag is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. D371,000 which issued to Gregg J. Smolenski in 1996. The cover illustrated therein actually is part of an insert for a golf club bag and the cover not only protects the golf clubs carried in the bag but also separates groups of the golf club heads of the taller golf clubs into separate compartments of the cover. The cover, a unitary shaft, and a base member constitute the insert illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. D371,000.
In particular detail, the cover in U.S. Pat. No. D371,000 encompasses and protects golf club heads, and the cover is secured above the bag by attachment to the shaft which extends the length of the bag from the top thereof to a base member which supports the shaft on the bottom platform of the bag. The cover itself includes an annular section that is collinear with the shaft and protects club heads from side impact. Tapering sides of the cover extend from the annular section to a circular top section which together protect tops of the club heads. A cover attachment member extends within a protected area--enclosed and defined by the annular and tapering sides and the circular top section--away from the circular top section and is dimensioned to securely receive within a recess formed therein an end of the shaft. To provide rigid support to the annular section, planar support walls extend from the top and tapering sides between the cover attachment member and the annular sections. Moreover, the support walls further serve to separate the protected, enclosed area into compartments for the separation of groups of club heads of the taller golf clubs from one another. The cover illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. D371,000 includes four such walls.
The cover illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. D371,000 is designed to fit over the top of the golf club bag immediately adjacent the longest clubs carried in the bag, which typically includes a driver or two iron. Unfortunately, drivers and two irons come in varying lengths and, recently, some putters actually have been designed which exceed the length of drivers and two irons. Consequently, a disadvantage to the cover of U.S. Pat. No. D371,000 is that the shaft of each insert has a fixed length and therefore can only accommodate golf clubs having a particular range of lengths. A need therefore has developed for such a cover which can be used to cover any set of golf clubs carried in a golf club bag regardless of the particular length of any one of the clubs.
Another disadvantage of the cover of U.S. Pat. No. D371,000 is that it has been found that the support walls are inconvenient since they in fact can interfere with the proper positioning of the cover on top of the golf club bag; for proper positioning, the club heads of the taller clubs must first be aligned for receipt within one of the compartments defined by the support walls. A need therefore exits for a cover like that shown in U.S. Pat. No. D371,000 but which can be properly positioned over a bag without regard to the orientation of the golf club heads of the taller clubs to the cover, but which retains sufficient rigidity to be effective in protecting the golf clubs from high impacts.